if that isn’t love, it’ll have to do

a Buck/Bucky, Buck/Marge (Buck/Marge/Bucky?) fic by phlegmatic

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Part Three

Gale’s lips, testing John’s pulse: just there, tucked under his jaw, feeling the quiet, steady throb through thin skin. The prickle of his stubble. The smell of him—a little engine, a little smoke. Gale doesn’t move, just counts the beats, feeling John’s heart tick away sure and true. John doesn’t move either, allowing it, simply leaned against the Jeep all loose and breathing controlled.

They’d shaken hands on the runway, and gone through their afternoon meetings, and in the evening paid their dues at the shindig to celebrate the first successful aid drop, but with the music still hopping and the drinks still flowing, Gale had nudged John in the ribs and said, “C’mon.” Then led him out of the club and across the base, through the dark, to the garage.

John had been silent, stayed silent and watching as he leaned against the Jeep and waited—stayed silent and watching as Gale edged in, until this: hands braced on the door, bracketing John’s middle; boots fit between John’s down on the dusty concrete; bodies just aligned, only just touching; Gale’s lips, testing John’s pulse.

“I saw a unicorn,” he murmurs, maybe more breath than words, but John’s jaw tenses through swallowing, so Gale knows he hears. “It was all bloodied up. I didn’t think I believed in signs ’til I saw that.”

“Hey now,” John says, but doesn’t continue. Gale takes his right hand from the Jeep, and finds John’s wrist hanging loose. His fingertips slide under John’s cuff like they know the way, feeling out the throb there too. Gale’s lips, his fingers; John’s heart, beating.

“I remembered what you said, ‘bout how God wanted it. I’m not a believer, but you said it, so I went over that wall. You said it, John. You an’ me. But then I saw that unicorn.”

John swallows again. “Buck.” He clears his throat. “Gale, you’re alright. We made it back. Goin’ home soon.”

“I thought I knew what it meant,” Gale keeps going, whispering now, whispering against John’s heart ticking just a bit faster, “but here y’ are. Here you are, whole and all.”

“You’re not talkin’ sense,” John mumbles, and Gale feels his wrist turning. He wraps around it, grips in.

“The unicorn. Thought it was tryin’ to tell me somethin’. Thought it was over. I believed you, that you’d find me again, so I went over that wall. But then I saw the unicorn.” Gale hasn’t had a single drop of the whisky that John had knocked back a few of, and has no frame of reference for it, but he imagines this is what drinking must do: the thick soup made of his brain, sludge that trudges through his thoughts and body so he can’t make decisions or move much at all, just pushed into instinct and impulse and slumping heavy against John. It’s peaceful, that’s the truth of it, letting himself beat slow with relief and sink into believing again.

“Hey now,” John says once more, and it sounds like his throat is wet and thick, but he finally shifts, wrapping his arms around Gale’s back and tugging their bodies flush.

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